A history of Frederick,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Frederick from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Frederick was a railway town platted and sold to pioneers by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, which completed track into it on September 12, 1881. Its grid of blocks was aligned by compass, with numbered avenues running north–south, and numbered streets running east–west. Main Street and Railway Avenue intersect at the grid's core. Incorporated on June 21, 1882, Frederick was named after the railroad's Finnish immigration agent and sales clerk—Kustaa "Frederick" Bergstadius.
On July 2, 1921, a tornado swept through the downtown and "practically every building in the town was demolished", but only one resident was killed, after his home was torn from its foundation while he was trying to get his family into the storm cellar.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Frederick’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewBird's eye view of Frederick, Dak…, 1883: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Frederick, decade by decade
1970s
1990s
Nothing in Frederick is on the National Register yet
That’s true of most small towns. It doesn’t mean Frederick has no history, only that no one has written up a nomination. The closest listed place is Martilla-Pettingel and Gorder General Merchandise Store in Frederick, 2.4 miles away.
Frederick and the nearest listed places
Closest to Frederick
How a place gets listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Bird's eye view of Frederick, Dak. 1883 (1883) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (5) and the Library of Congress (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.